The addys posted in the adjoining thread were: [email protected] and [email protected]. I urge you to compose your own note, send it off, then post a copy here.

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Executive Club Changes Extreme Blow to Customer Loyalty

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Messrs. Eddington and Street:

The newly published changes to the British Airways Executive Club are appalling.

Among all but the tiny percentage of your customers who in this economy can afford frequently to purchase premium-cabin travel, they are cause for outrage, fury, and redirection of brand loyalty.

I believe these changes constitute the single worst evisceration of frequent flyer benefits in the 22-year history of these schemes.

For you to quickly and unilaterally devalue existing mileage balances by at least 50%, making premium-cabin awards two to three times more "expensive," while reducing points earned on all but full-fare tickets to 25% of actual mileage flown is a vicious, unprovoked attack on your own customer base.

You must know that the changes render your program immediately and totally irrelevant in North America. Every other mileage program in the United States awards points at least equal to miles flown on all published fares.

How will you position the Executive Club against your partner American Airlines' AAdvantage scheme when the latter offers US-Australia partner awards in First for 125,000 miles while your program apparently will require up to 240,000 points for the same seat?

How will you attract families, and executives on holiday, while actively discouraging them from joining the Executive Club, as your website explicitly does, when every other transatlantic competitor will offer them full points for miles flown and -- in most cases -- status miles towards elite program tiers?

Your intention can only be to flush the Executive Club of most members and destroy brand loyalty among all but superpremium passengers. I understood the Ayling-era strategy of building the airline around premium trade, but those were boom times. Today you operate more 777s and 747-400s than any carrier save JAL. That's a lot of lift to fly into a world war and a global depression. You're not exactly a corporate-jet operator. In this challenging environment, the spectacle of a big, serious airline deliberately repudiating a numerical majority of its ticket-buyers is a hell of a thing to witness.

In one day you have done more to enrage loyal customers -- customers who WOULD have either grown into or returned to premium BA travel as the economy revives, but now won't -- than United Airlines has done in the past fifteen years. And United is an intrinsically anti-customer organization.

I have flown British Airways, and BOAC before them, for more than 30 years. In every class of service. The changes of which I learned today penalize me for past loyalty. I believe this is corporate dementia. I am extremely angry.

I urge you to reexamine the punitive and ruinous changes you are inflicting on the North American Executive Club members before they cause you additional grievous harm. In the meantime, although your actions seem to indicate this is exactly what you sought, I assure you I will not be flying British Airways.

Most sincerely,

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Executive Club # XXXXXXXX